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						<title><![CDATA[Home Recording - Blogs]]></title>
						<link>http://www.recordingreview.com/articles</link>
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					  <title><![CDATA[Michael Wagener Workshop In November 2007]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.recordingreview.com/articles/blogs/96/Michael-Wagener-Workshop-In-November-2007.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[ As many of you may know, I attended the Michael Wagener Recording Workshop back in Janauary of 2006 and I considered it be one of the greatest learning experiences in my life. I've written extensive articles on my trip. There is no substitute for working side by side with a producer who has his name on over 60 million records in an environment where you, the engineer / student, is more of a priority than the actual recording of the song. (In other words, in a standard recording situation the assistant is scum and you can not stop to ask question all the time.) I'd highly urge anyone with the time, budget, and inclination to seriously consider attending the Workshop. You'll learn more about recording in 8 days than you had previously known your entire life. I couldn't recommend it any higher. I just wish I could afford to go everytime.  Brandon]]></description>
					  <author>Brandon Drury</author>
					  <pubDate>Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:00:00 CDT</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[UAD-1 vs Focusrite Liquidmix vs TC Powercore]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.recordingreview.com/articles/blogs/95/UAD-1-vs-Focusrite-Liquidmix-vs-TC-Powercore.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[ Hello all, I've decide that I'm just about ready to upgrade my plugins. I've been using Waves Platinum for a long time, and I think I'm ready to go for something a little different. I was asked why I wanted to upgrade from my Waves plugins on the forum today.&#160; You can read all about it on the forum. The only problem is I have no idea which route I want to take. I'm leaning towards the Focusrite Liquid Mix to handle all my EQ and compression needs without worrying about running out, but then I'd like to have something in the way of reverbs too. People seem to say that the UAD-1 is of tremendous audio quality but it's track counts are not that high.  As always, price is an issue as well. To get two UAD-1 PCI cards and the plugins I want, it's going to cost well over $2,500 and that would really eat into my studio monitor upgrade savings plan. Hmmm.  There is also the issue of using PCI vs Firewire. Firewire isn't portable. Then again, I'm not sure why I'd ever need to take any of these fancy plugins on the road. I hear there is extra latency with any new DSP process. That makes sense. I can still track with my Waves plugins without any grief. If anyone has any advice, don't be shy about jumping on the UAD-1 vs Focusrite Liquidmix vs TC Powercore forum thread and giving me some advice! I've even considered the idea of going with a computer upgrade and getting some nicer native plugins.&#160; I DON'T KNOW!!! Brandon]]></description>
					  <author>Brandon Drury</author>
					  <pubDate>Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 CDT</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[Eric Conn Masters Number One Country Hit]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.recordingreview.com/articles/blogs/94/Eric-Conn-Masters-Number-One-Country-Hit.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[ In case you haven't checked out my interview with Eric Conn, you may want to right now. Understanding Audio Mastering: An Interview With Eric Conn&#160;Eric must be doing something right at Independent Mastering because Garth Brook's &#8220;More Than A Memory&#8221; is #1. Check out Eric Conn's blog post Where do you go when you&#8217;ve got a great song? #1 COUNTRY NATIONAL AIRPLAY .&#160; It's my theory that maybe Eric's dealing with me may have somehow indirectly improved his mastering on the Garth Brooks record, but that is debatable. You know, I really thought that I was getting a hell of a deal when Eric gave me a free bag of the best coffee on earth. But now I think I got completely ripped off. Garth Brooks gets a #1 hit and all I got was a bag of coffee beans. (Actually, Seven Hills Coffee is so good that if I had to choose between never having a #1 hit and never having Seven Hills Coffee, I may have to forget the #1 hit).  I'll let him slide this time, but the next time I had better have a #1 hit when I walk out of Independent Mastering. Even Idiots Need Real MasteringThere was a day when I was very intimidated by the &#8220;big boys&#8221; of the recording industry. Granted, most of them are very talented at what they do, but very few of them are untouchable. In fact, I'm doing a little bit of web work for Eric Conn just to get Independent Mastering more exposure. In other words, Eric masters a whole lot more than just ultra robo stars. He even masters retards like me at a price that is quite fair (but with enough mark up to cover the coffee). Brandon ]]></description>
					  <author>Brandon Drury</author>
					  <pubDate>Sun, 09 Sep 2007 00:00:00 CDT</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[Direct Guitar Technology is FINALLY Here]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.recordingreview.com/articles/blogs/93/Direct-Guitar-Technology-is-FINALLY-Here.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[ As many of you may know, I believe that if you want to achieve real deal electric guitar sounds, you need to record with a real deal amp in a real room with a real mic. (There are a few exceptions to this....Nine Inch Nails and Def Leopard come to mind).  I've watched the Line6 POD rise (and fall). I even own a Rocktron Prophesy which I consider to be just a hair towards this side of useless for direct guitar recording. I also have the Native Instruments Guitar Rig2 plugin. It has one tone that is useful for me....but not that useful. In other words, I've just not been that impressed with these direct guitar gadgets. I have heard people make great music with some of these, but they are usually going for &#8220;different&#8221; guitar tones. The mixes I've heard that tried to use these emulators when a real deal guitar amp was required usually came up short.  I have to admit that I have some very fun electric guitar toys that make it hard for me to reach for some new gadget. My Rivera Knucklehead, 5150, Marshall Super Lead from 1971, JCM 800 cabinet loaded with Celestion G12H30s, complete guitar fort, and Royer R121 ribbon mic are some very fun toys. The average person is not stupid enough to blow this much money on ridiculous noise making equipment (but you may!).  In short, I just don't think direct guitar technology is ready for the big time.....until today.  Yup, finally I have to throw in the towel and lower my nose a little bit (which is a good idea because my nose hairs are probably quite gross!).  Fractal Audio Systems now has the Axe-FX.For $1700 you get a direct guitar recording that actually has &#8220;life&#8221; to it. What do I mean by &#8220;life&#8221;? Hell, I don't know....excitement!...I guess. To me, every direct recording method I've heard just sort of seemed &#8220;boring&#8221; or &#8220;missing something&#8221;. When I hear my Marshall or Rivera cranked to oblivion and I like the chord ring, I can hear stuff happening. It sounds like giant gears are turning in some sort of Industrial Revolution factory. If you stick your hand in there, it immediate rips it right off.....that type of thing. I've always missed this in the direct stuff. Well, it appears that Fractal Audio Systems may have finally got the direct guitar right.  Check out the Sound clips. This damn thing actually has &#8220;life&#8221;. Check out the JCM 800 (Brit 800) sound clip. (Ignore the out of tune parts).  Am I Selling All My Amps?A part of me says &#8220;FINALLY!!! I can sell all my amps and buy a bass boat or rocket launcher!&#8221; (I've always wanted both of these). I'm going to wait just a little bit before I shell out the $1750 for a direct recording box. However, I'm tempted to sell some stuff and maybe make some changes. Is The Fractal Audio Axe-FX PerfectI don't think the Axe-FX is perfect, but&#160;I hear some real magic in their box. I'd love to have one. I think I could use it on just about every record I ever do in the future. With that said, there is probably an extra 5% that could be gotten from the real deal gear....maybe. This is just based on the clips I've heard. Guitar purists may still find subtle nuances in the real stuff that you can't get with the the Axe-FX. However, these people are probably more interested in magic guitar tone than recording magic songs...(or maybe magic guitar in magic songs......I don't know....this is getting a little too magical for me!) ConclusionThe Axe-FX seems to be a revolution. For the first time, a bunch of digital electronics nerds have gotten the real deal amp thing happening in a way that has got me excited. It's not cheap. I'm going to have to sit back and watch what happens to see if I really &#8220;need&#8221; one of these things&#160;to see&#160;if it can replace a bunch of my gear I already have. With all &#8220;digital nerd&#8221; technology, I expect A) the price to drop and B) someone else to come out with a &#8220;better&#8221; one in the next 18 months. Time will tell. Either way, I can no longer say that direct guitars suck....unfortunately.]]></description>
					  <author>Brandon Drury</author>
					  <pubDate>Tue, 07 Aug 2007 00:00:00 CDT</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[Massive Cubase LE Upgrade Deal!!!]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.recordingreview.com/articles/blogs/92/Massive-Cubase-LE-Upgrade-Deal.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[&#160;I've been saying it for a while now. Steinberg, the makers of Cubase, love to give huge deals when it comes it comes to upgrading your recording software. I often recommend a person buying an audio interface with Cubase LE bundled and then upgrading Cubase LE if / when the time is right.   Now is the best time to upgrade!!  I stole this out of Steinbergusers.com Newsletter:  For all you Cubase LE users still out there, we have to tell you, the LE upgrade program has been a smashing success so far, and LE users have been upgrading to Cubase 4 and Studio 4 at half-off the store price everyday since the limited-time deal was introduced. For only $399 you can upgrade from your modest, capable-though-highly-lacking-in-some-areas copy of LE to the biggest sequencer on the block; Cubase 4, or to his only slightly-smaller little brother Cubase Studio 4 for $199. If any of your friends have been luckier in love, more confident, or just walking around with big smiles on their faces, you can be sure they have already upgraded. Call Upgrade Sales at (877) 253-3900 for more information or to place your order. ]]></description>
					  <author>Brandon Drury</author>
					  <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:00:00 CDT</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[Does Computer Recording Fight Creativity]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.recordingreview.com/articles/blogs/91/Does-Computer-Recording-Fight-Creativity.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[ In the debate between standalone audio recording devices and computer recording devices, I've heard many times that computers aren't meant for creativity. I just finished reading an interview with Pete Townshend in EQ magazines. Pete goes on to say that computers force you into using the technical side of your brain when you should be using the creative side.  I can't say that I agree with this logic exactly. In fact, the reasons I disagree may be the same reason that I personally don't have much use for standalone recorders.   Computers SCREAM Creativity If you ask me, computers allow me to be extremely creative in all sorts of areas (whether it be audio recording, graphic design, or even the writing of this blog). While computers are very complicated little devices to the laymen (even us tech nerds usually don't understand how they really work), a properly setup computer can be almost completely transparent to the process of creating.   When a person doesn't have to think to &#8220;do&#8221;, they become extremely creative. Before a person stop thinking, they have to be quite familiar with several parts of the computer process as well as the recording process. Obviously, a person have to be comfortable enough with typing on a keyboard that they no longer have to put much conscious effort into typing.   For example, I didn't think &#8220;T &#8211; Y &#8211; P &#8211; I &#8211; N &#8211; G&#8221;... I thought &#8220;typing&#8221;. Before I knew it, &#8220;typing&#8221; showed up on the screen. The same can be said with a mouse. Those of us have used a mouse more than we have used the shower don't have to think about double clicking or bouncing around the screen. It just sort of happens.   Of course, in recording there is another hurdle....the recording software. Many people run for their lives and dive out of tall buildings at the thought of standing up to the almighty learning curve demon known as Pro Tools or Cubase. Of course, when they finally stand up and fight, they usually find that it's a stupid old man in some kind of weird phone booth contraption that even a cowardly lion could stand up to. When I'm making my ruckus in Cubase, I very seldom think &#8220;Cubase&#8221;. I think &#8220;sadder&#8221;, &#8220;happier&#8221;, &#8220;meaner&#8221;, or &#8220;stupider&#8221;. In other words, I think in adjectives that describe the direction I want to take the music. I'm not thinking about shortcuts or RAM. I'm thinking about how the song makes me feel.   How Am I Creative With A Computer? So how have I &#8220;MAGICALLY&#8221; figured out how to use the creative side of my brain even with dealing with the &#8220;cold&#8221;, &#8220;sterile&#8221; digital contraption known as a computer. Easy. I used it enough that I got comfortable with it. I actually took the time to learn how to use it. I read the manual (one of the first times in my life...I must say I AM proud of myself).   I took it as my responsibility as a recording guy to be as knowledgeable of the subject as possible. (That's a work in progress!).   Why Is Pete Townshend Not As Excited About Computers? Well that's an easy one. He's old! He didn't have Nintendo controller in his hands when he was 9 years old. He wasn't using a mouse in grade school. Maybe he doesn't have the embedded &#8220;instinct&#8221; of naturally using a computer and therefore may not feel comfortable enough in front of one to make audio recordings. Fair enough.  However, for those of us who feel more comfortable around computers than we do at the big girls lingerie section....wait....bad example. Well, you get the idea. If you feel comfortable in front of a computer, don't hesitate to use it for recording just because a few old timers aren't so big on them.   If you aren't huge on using a computer, you can always go the standalone route. Of course, standalone boxes have quite the learning curve themselves. That may very well explain why I never felt creative in front of one.  Good luck!   One Last Thing I personally think that the recording process (I'm referring to the stuff that happens before the computer) gets in the way of the recording WAY more than the stuff that happens within the computer. At least this is my point of view. It's easy to setup a software program that works the same way every time. It's hard to get a singer who gets inspired the same way everytime.  Brandon   ]]></description>
					  <author>Brandon Drury</author>
					  <pubDate>Thu, 26 Jul 2007 00:00:00 CDT</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[Electric Guitar Mixing Tips]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.recordingreview.com/articles/blogs/90/Electric-Guitar-Mixing-Tips.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[ Not happy with your electric guitar recordings? This blog should give you some insight as to how you can drastically improve your electric guitar tones during the mixing process. Okay, tracking is all finished. You are ready to begin the mixing process. If you find that you are not happy with the way your guitars sound during tracking there is hope. Go ahead and add the following plugins to your guitar track:   EQ  Compression  Delay  Reverb  Chorus  Flange  Phasing Now, play around for 10 minutes until you find the massive electric guitar sound you are looking for.  Did you find it? If you did, GREAT! This blog is over for you. If you didn't find it, you are not alone. I tried to use my plugin collections to make my electric guitar tones for years. I tried everything in the book. You name it, I've tried it! My guitar sounds never really came into my own until I discovered the ultimate plugin for mixing electric guitars... NO PLUGINS!! That's right. This plugin is as transparent as you can imagine. No audible distortion. No crazy phase problems, just pure signal. You can't even here it working. The best part is the price. It's free!  Alright, enough being a smart ass. The day I learned that plugins were not the right tool for the job was the day my guitars DRASTICALLY improved. A big part of this whole audio engineering process (like many other crafts) is understanding which tool is the right tool for the job. A chainsaw is probably not idea for cutting the wedding cake. A flame thrower is not the best tool to test if you have a gas link. Most of all, plugins are not the right tools for make killer guitar tone. So, if you are in the mixing process and totally hate the guitars you've gotten, there is only one solution. First, make sure that you really hate them and that you are not just being stupid (a problem I suffer from frequently). Second, if you are sure you hate them, click on the guitar track and press delete. Done! The Right Tool For Killer Guitar Tone The right tool for killer guitar tone is an amp head. I'm not sure why I spent hundreds of billions of hours tweaking plugins on electric guitar when I could have done a much better job by playing with the knobs on the amp.  Why reach for a parametric EQ to take mud out of an electric guitar recording when all you really need to do is pull the low end out of the amp? Why add fizz to recorded tracks when you can bump up the presence on the amp? If parametric EQ was that good at creating tone, people would plug their Les Paul directly into a parametric equalizer and be done with it. EQ's have their place. They sort of nudge the tone this way or that way. They don't create tone. If you want a great recorded track, you must focus on the source. What If I Don't Know What A Great Guitar Track Is? This is a common problem. In fact, it's the entire challenge of audio engineering...learning how to listen. There are no real rules for getting great guitars except that a great guitar sound isn't &#8220;too&#8221; anything. If a guitar is too bright, too boomy, or has too much gain you have a problem. Only you can define what &#8220;too&#8221; means. However, you can start my making your guitars not so bright, not so boomy, and not use too much gain and you'll be amazed at how quickly your guitars will improve.   Where Is The Magic Mic Placement? Grab a Shure SM 57 or maybe even a condenser microphone. Slap on some headphones and start talking. Move around quite a bit. There will be a spot where if you stand in the PERFECT spot, you will hear angels singing. Seriously, you will actually hear this glorious tone of half-naked chicks with wings singing into your headphones while you go through the motions of &#8220;check 1 2, check 1 2&#8221;. Then, it'll occur to you that you must be crazy to hear angels in your headphones and you have to be burned out to assume that there is any magic at all in your little Shure SM 57 or any other acoustic energy to electric energy converter.  If you are into miracles and all that jive, GREAT! However, if you expect to find a miracle with your microphone, well.... let's just say that I don't have a whole lot of faith in anything supernatural occurring with my microphone placement. Back to what I was saying. You can clearly hear different tones as you dance around the mic. It gets bright in some places and boomier in other places. But like I said, you never really hear angels. You never sound like Morgan Freedman in that Penguin movie. Well, the effects of mic placement are exactly the same on your guitar amp. I'm not convinced there is any magic spot when micing a guitar.  The Amp In The Room You've probably already read in various recording magazines that you should spend your time getting the amp to sound great in the room. What does this mean exactly? It means a few things.   #1 You should get the guitar to sound awesome in the room. If you can achieve that you are in. There should be an exciting quality to the guitars. They shouldn't hurt. It should be pleasing to listen to them even at fairly high volumes. (Obviously, anything hurts if it gets too loud). When you listen to the guitars you need to remember that there is an entire band that these guitars must work with. A ton of low end sounds stupid on a guitar recording. Have you really ever heard an electric guitar fighting with the kick drum in the subwoofers (NOT recommended!). #2 It means that mics don't lie. (Microphones aren't even female! HA HA..) If you think the amp sounds great in the room but the recording sucks, it's more than likely your tone really sucks and you just get too excited about volume or whatever. There are a couple of exceptions to this. If you mic the guitar in the dead center with a dynamic or condenser mic you will get an extremely bitey tone. If you mic the guitar too far to the edge, you'll get a very dark tone. If you mic the guitar too close with a cardiod mic, the proximity effect will kick in and the tone will be bass heavy. If you mic the guitar from too far away, the sound will be distant. So as long as you are fairly close to the center of the guitar speaker (but not directly on the guitar speaker) and not too close or too far away (1-3&#8221; isn't a bad place to start) you should be fairly close. After you tweak the amp to do what you want, you may decide to move the mic an inch or two this way or that way. This will sort of act like an EQ. Remember when you talked into the 57. We may need to knock some low end on the amp out or we may need to boost the low end back in. Moving the mic around lets us tweak just a little bit after the character of the tone is really rocking. Electric Guitar Mixing Conclusion If all of this works out and tracking goes the way I hope it does for you, electric guitar mixing is fairly straight forward. Just grab the volume faders and move them around until you get something that does make you mad. Done! Of course, you can always add effects to them, but this is purely to enhance the tone...NOT TO FIX IT!!   You still may find that you need a little bit of EQ to make the guitars fit into the mix. This is okay, but be lazy about it. There are times that it gets tough cramming big guitars, big drums, big bass, big vocals, and big egos into the little grooves on a cd. In a subtle way, slowly nudge the tone in the direction it needs to go to cut through without stepping on the toes of the other tracks.  ]]></description>
					  <author>Brandon Drury</author>
					  <pubDate>Tue, 03 Jul 2007 00:00:00 CDT</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[If You Buy An Apple Iphone, I HATE you ]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.recordingreview.com/articles/blogs/89/If-You-Buy-An-Apple-Iphone-I-HATE-you-.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[ Yes, that's right. If you buy an Iphone, I hate you. I don't hate you like the way a girlfriend hates her boyfriend's mistress. I hate you like the black man dangling from a tree in Mississippi 150 years ago hates the white people who stare up at him laughing. No, I didn't wake up on the wrong side of bed this morning.&#160; I'm in a great mood today. Seriously. However.... Warning! I'm about to be an asshole. In case you are not on top of this, the new Apple Iphone is supposed to be the launch of the century. Apparently, it's going to be bigger than Jesus or John Lennon for at least a couple of days.  There's just one problem. If you are convinced you need one of these, you are probably a braindead jackass. The Iphone has all these &#34;brand new&#34; features that everyone &#34;really needs&#34;, right? The Iphone is about to revolutionize our culture, right? Bullsh*t! The Iphone has combined a bunch of technology that has been around for 4 years and crammed it into a package that the layman feels safe buying.&#160; No one feels like they really have to&#160;actually get anything done with an Iphone.&#160; &#160; Of course, for people who travel&#160;often and need to communicate constantly, the Blackberry has been a popular and very powerful solution. The Blackberry can play movies, mp3s, send email, has advanced internet features, is a phone, bla bla bla. No one cares. Why?&#160; Because the Blackberry website uses the word &#34;productivity&#34; on it's homepage. While some may see this concept of &#34;productivity&#34; as positive, for most it's a double edged sword. When you define laying on the couch or checking Myspace as being &#34;productive&#34;, it turns out that the word &#34;productivity&#34; will actually inhibit your &#34;productiveness&#34;. (In other words, if you are in a race to see just how useless of a human you can become, the Blackberry would be like having Rosie O'Donnel in your passenger seat). The Iphone marks an all time slip into the Abyss of a sickening obsession and mindless competition of the acquisition of useless material possession. If I was to walk around all day for an entire month collecting dog turds in a bag, I'd official take the top spot as &#34;Town Wackjob&#34;. However, I expect to see the equivalent of a Night Of The Living dead outside my backyard window tomorrow. That's right, DOG SH*T OBSESSED ZOMBIES ARE ABOUT TO INVADE!! Of course, they will be disguised as white collar people that will eventually do your taxes or sell you insurance. DON'T TRUST THEM! Finally, 16 year olds can piss away a month of burger flipping in a way that is only paralleled by glueing a 3 foot wing on the back of a rusty 1993 Chevy Corsica.  Why We BuyIt's not that I'm against buying stuff. I have a music recording room filled with expensive stuff. However, it's the reason we purchase the things we purchase that is the issue here. I buy music equipment because I want to CREATE music.  I expect the most popular reason to buy an Iphone is going to be &#34;because it's an Iphone&#34; or &#34;because it's Apple&#34; or &#34;because the Razor was SOOOO spring 2007&#34;. The hardcore liberals are always bitching about the corporations being so corporationeeee (see Team America) but if they are so worried about the snake of corporate America growing too dangerous, why don't they tell the mice to hide? Why don't they let the other mice know just how dangerous it is out there. Why? ......Because it's an Iphone! &#160;]]></description>
					  <author>Brandon Drury</author>
					  <pubDate>Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:00:00 CDT</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[Mastering: What Do You Want To Know?]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.recordingreview.com/articles/blogs/88/Mastering-What-Do-You-Want-To-Know.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[ Mastering is an often misunderstood subject. In fact, I don't think I REALLY knew what it was until I took a trip down to Independent Mastering&#160; in Nashville. This week I'll be interviewing Eric Conn (from Independent Mastering). His mastering credits&#160; are a Who's Who of country, rock, and pretty much everything else too. (I still want to know why he never mastered a Van Halen album...har har).  Anyway, so what do you want to know about mastering? Post your questions here. The best questions will get asked.  I'm going to limit the interview to 10 questions so ask wisely. ]]></description>
					  <author>Brandon Drury</author>
					  <pubDate>Tue, 05 Jun 2007 00:00:00 CDT</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[Want Amazing Sound Quality? Quit Trying!]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.recordingreview.com/articles/blogs/87/Want-Amazing-Sound-Quality-Quit-Trying.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[ I have a new theory:The only way to achieve extreme &#34;quality&#34; or &#34;fidelity&#34; is to pretty much forget about quality and fidelity and go for maximum creativity.  When you go intoa new recording project, if your #1 ambition is &#34;quality&#34; it's natural to reach for expensive gear. By default, you have already (if only subconsciously) turned off your ears just a little bit and are now just a little more biased towards using the expensive gear based on hearsay you picked up on stupid recording forums and not so much on what you are actually hearing. However, when you are thinking about maximum creativity, the &#34;quality&#34; rules get thrown at the window entirely. Instead of grabbing something because it is &#34;good&#34; or &#34;expensive&#34;, you grab something based 100% on what it sounding like exactly what you envision. If the mic or gear isn't satisfying your vision, you'll find something that does. It really doesn't matter if your vision is totally off the wall or quite &#34;normal&#34;. This is what I keep talking about when I say engineering is a quest for music and not a quest for higher sample rates or whatever. You can get away with tones that are dramatically different in the same genre of music as long as the ending &#34;vibe&#34; is the same. That &#34;vibe&#34; is when music is effective. Most of us tend to love the sound of our favorite records. Most engineers think X record that came out when they were 14 is the best sounding record of all time. This is because the music was most effective to us and so we attribute some of that magic (probably more than is really do) to the engineering. What not try a kick drum mic on vocals? I would never assume that a kick drum would be the right mic for a vocal, but if a track came out sounding cool, then it was the right mic. No rules. If the &#34;kick drum vocal sound&#34; was RIGHT for that track, no non-kick drum mic is going to work even if it costs $20,000.  Lastly, it's easy to confuse fidelity with well-executed creativity. Who's to say that your favorite vocal sound of all time didn't use a kick drum mic? Brandon]]></description>
					  <author>Brandon Drury</author>
					  <pubDate>Wed, 30 May 2007 00:00:00 CDT</pubDate>
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